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Grand County communications director previews website overhaul, chatbot and digital workflow rollout
Summary
Communications Director Christine Travis briefed commissioners on the county’s website platform, accessibility scanning, a new digital workflow (Civic Optimize) for forms and permitting, and the county chatbot. Staff will implement an eight-week rollout and follow-up training; some costs and responsibilities were discussed.
Grand County Communications Director Christine Travis briefed the Board of County Commissioners on Jan. 28 about the county website, accessibility tools and a new digital workflow service intended to digitize forms and routing for multiple departments.
Travis said the county uses CivicPlus as its content management system and that the county recently completed a major website redesign. She described Monsido (now Acquia Optimize in CivicPlus packaging) as a weekly scanner the county uses to check pages and documents for accessibility and broken links. Travis said the county contracts for five hours per month of a CivicPlus “virtual webmaster” to help with issues the county cannot resolve internally.
Travis described Civic Optimize (the county’s name for the digital workflow component) as a tool to digitize processes that currently require repeated printing, signing, scanning and emailing. She gave the example of a contract-routing form that today passes manually between legal, administration, accounting and the originating staff member; Optimize would route the form electronically, notify reviewers and preserve an accessible, auditable record. Travis said the burn-permit process is another priority because technicians in the field could capture photos, get a property-owner signature on site and complete the application digitally.
Commissioners asked about staff training and public acceptance. Travis said the county is planning an implementation period of about eight weeks, with the CivicPlus team helping to build and launch initial forms; after county staff (including IT) learn the system, departmental staff will be trained to build and manage their own forms. Travis said public-facing benefits include a single app-like list of forms and improved accessibility compliance. She said some forms will remain with state agencies rather than be duplicated at the county level to avoid re-creating work already managed by the state.
Travis also described the county chatbot (Phrase as a service) and said it provides weekly reports on top user queries; those reports help the county spot repeated public information needs. She noted an annual cost associated with the chatbot backend and stressed the county will continue to provide phone- and in-person assistance for residents who need it.
Travis told commissioners the site previously had about 5,000 active pages and staff reduced that to about 500 to limit outdated content appearing in search-engine results. She offered to return after the eight-week launch to demonstrate the new forms and report on staff uptake.
